South West Trains and Health and Safety

South West trains have been running a promotion over the summer offering a £20.00 Saturday rail fare to London. Maybe it was Saturday and Sunday and I will assume it was a return trip, but it doesn’t make any difference as they cancelled it on Saturday.

Saturday was VJ day and there was a major event in London to mark the 70th anniversary of VJ day when a lot of the surviving veterans and their families were expected to travel to London for the day. Apparently South West trains cancelled the £20.00 promotion in the name of health and safety otherwise there might be overcrowding on their trains which could make travelling dangerous. For God’s sake, who took the decision to cancel this offer and more importantly why. Health and safety is used as an excuse for lots of things there days, but overcrowding on trains seems a pretty poor reason.

I will generously assume that health and safety is of paramount importance to South West trains and overcrowding is dangerous so is something to be avoided. With this in mind I will also have to assume that they do not let any of their trains get overcrowded and during the rush hours into and out of London and they do not let commuters get on trains that have more passengers than seats. If they do, they are knowingly going against their own thinking which, of course, suggests health and safety is not the driving force behind this decision. It makes you wonder if profit could be involved somewhere.

It would be interesting if the Chief Executive of South West trains would be happy to go on national TV to answer why his company raised the price on Saturday, which is what they did by cancelling the offer. What we all need to remember though is that this was due to Health and Safety. Remember that statement when you are sat on your overcrowded trains going to work and please feel free to contact South West trains to ask them about their policy on health and safety and overcrowding on their trains.